Nobody ever said teaching was
easy, but I believe it is being made virtually impossible by the way in which
it is being managed and steered by leaders and government. The job could be
made a million times easier by addressing the six issues I’ve identified below.

This needs to be done, not in
order to give teachers an easy ride and a cushy life (as most think we have
already) but in order to help teachers do a better job, and by extension, help
students achieve more. I don’t know one teacher who would reduce the amount of
effort they put into their work if the concerns below were dealt with, they
would merely maintain it and achieve more with what they’ve got. Who wouldn’t
want that?

Vague measures of
success

Part of the problem is that a lot
of what constitutes success in teaching is tacit, and therefore very difficult
to state clearly what it is, and even more difficult to measure it. The result
is that teachers are given vague performance criteria, which are far too easily
manipulated and argued to mean whatever the observer wants them to mean.

It’s very difficult to know
whether you are doing something ‘right’ in teaching, and as a result sometimes
experienced teachers are surprised at their apparent poor performance. I think
perhaps a focus on measuring the learning rather than the teaching might be a
way forward – so that if students are achieving, the way in which that’s been
accomplished doesn’t matter.

Cookie cutter
teaching isn’t achievable

By this I mean the expectation
that all pedagogy works in the same way for all teachers. It’s just not true –
one activity might suit one teacher, and be completely unworkable for another.
Therefore, specific advice and prescribed activities, are useless and what
really needs to happen is for a teacher to find what works for them
individually.

What actually happens is that
struggling teachers are told explicitly what to do in lesson, and when it
doesn’t work, that is just proof that the teacher is really that bad. If they
can’t pull off a certain activity then it is their fault, which leads to
confusion if the activity has been carried out to the letter and still no
success.

Inability to complete
everything in time given

If you did everything you were
asked to do in teaching you would have to give up eating and sleeping. The only
way to succeed, and this is unwritten and not advised from anyone, is to find
corners to cut where nobody notices there’s a snip. That’s how all successful
teachers I have known have done it.

Why would you oversubscribe all
your members of staff like that? It just creates a huge gap between what
‘should’ be getting done, and what ‘is’, and creates a necessity for spin and
false appearances. High expectations are important, yes, as are raising
standards, but when this occurs in the realm of fantasy it doesn’t help
anybody.

Constantly moving
goalposts

The way in which brains work and
how students learn doesn’t change. So why does the recommended pedagogy change
so often? The results are that no teacher can build on their experience and
knowledge of ‘what works’, because ‘what works’ is said to have changed so
often. This causes teachers to constantly replan and reform their working
practices, so no one can get a foothold.

I understand constant improvement
is necessary, but surely there are fundamental things about learning that never
change that can underpin everything?

Personal attacks

There is so much emphasis on a
teacher’s personality that a lot of suggestions for improvement actually form
very personal attacks on someone’s character. Requests to improve on the
presence of a dialect, on the way a teacher stands and moves or even what they
do outside of work all form part of modern teacher appraisals. It’s
micro-management of the worst kind.

Bullying and workload

And of course, no list like this would
be complete without the two most popular reasons for wanting to leave teaching:
the institutional bullying of teachers and the ridiculously high workloads in
comparison to pay levels. These two in themselves, without any of the issues
above, would constitute a very difficult working environment.

Do you feel that your working
life is being made excessively difficult? Can you confirm that if it was made
easier, you would not ‘slack off’ but maintain your effort levels and become
more successful? Please comment below or email me.